Syria, budget on D.C. agenda

Gibson, Tonko against military intervention, at odds with the debt ceiling

Jimmy Vielkin, Times Union

By Jimmy Vielkind

Updated 7:46 pm, Monday, September 2, 2013

US Senator John McCain, R-AZ, answers a question as Senator Lindsey Graham, R-SC, looks on following their meeting with US President Barack Obama at the White House in Washington, DC, on September 2, 2013. McCain said Monday that Congress's failure to authorize military action in Syria would be "catastrophic" because it would undermine US credibility. AFP Photo/Jewel SamadJEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images ORG XMIT: McCain sa
(JEWEL SAMAD)

US Senator John McCain, R-AZ, answers a question as Senator Lindsey...

The Capital Region's congressmen are getting ready to return to Washington next week, where they'll find a long list of problems and no clear path to solutions.

A budget — or another temporary stopgap — must be adopted by Oct. 1.

A few weeks later, administration officials estimate, the government will exhaust its $16.7 trillion borrowing capacity, which will prompt loan defaults if Congress doesn't raise it.

Legislation authorizing food stamps and farm subsidies must be enacted by the new year, or they'll revert to levels set in 1947, potentially prompting a milk price spike.

And at the top of the docket is a resolution backed by President Barack Obama that would authorize airstrikes against Syria as retaliation for a chemical weapons attack there last month. Rep. Chris Gibson, R-Kinderhook, has been a leading opponent of any military intervention in the civil war-torn Mideast country, and in a Monday interview Rep. Paul Tonko suggested he would also vote against strikes.

"There's no denying that people being gassed, youngsters being gassed, is horrific, immoral and unacceptable, but I think we need to move with caution because of many dynamics," said Tonko, D-Amsterdam. "Going it alone, further draining the taxpayers and further exhausting the troops makes for a very difficult situation, and I hope we tread cautiously here."

Gibson, a retired Army colonel who served several tours of duty in Iraq, reiterated his opposition on Sunday evening, saying he feared airstrikes would "Americanize" a sectarian conflict that has drawn in Iran and other Islamist militants.

Both men cited the federal budget in explaining their opposition. Tonko is hoping to undo across-the-board spending cuts known as sequestration that took effect at the beginning of this year. He voted against a larger fiscal package that contained the possible cuts but raised the debt ceiling to avoid an earlier default. Gibson, whose party controls the House of Representatives, voted for the measure.

Gibson said he'd like to find a "pro-growth, fiscally responsible replacement for sequester" like zero-base budgeting, a system in which each program's spending is assumed to start at zero — not the previous year's allotment. Tonko said cuts to research and development should be rolled back, and hoped that House Speaker John Boehner would designate members to a conference committee that would reconcile his chamber's budget with one adopted by the Democrat-led Senate.

A "whale of a fight," to borrow Boehner's words, seems to be brewing over the debt ceiling. Some Republicans are pushing to tie any increase to rollbacks to the Affordable Care Act, or Obama-care, which next year will require individuals to purchase health insurance or face a tax penalty. A provision requiring certain businesses to offer insurance was postponed earlier this year.

"If big business gets an exemption from the employer mandate, then so should the American people. I think that's appropriate for this discussion over the next couple of months," Gibson said.

Tonko disagreed, and said the debt ceiling should simply rise. "I hope that will not be subject to additional games and cavalier activity that ties policy to what should be a straightforward vote. Congress has authorized this spending, and Congress should authorize America's right to pay her bills," he said. "Why would you delay implementation of the Affordable Care Act when it's going to cut the deficit?"

In May, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated repeal of the law would increase the deficit. Gibson has said he is skeptical that people will react to the law as has been projected.

But Gibson was clear in suggesting that the government should not default, or shut down, as part of high-stakes negotiations.

"We want limited but effective government ... we don't want to shut down the government," he said.